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[20:58:10] As the Rite of Spring is completed, followers of Vynora may now receive a blessing!

 

By noone but the infamous vulture Yellowfinger minutes after I asked around for people to participate for the goal. Posted a link to the thread and its intention, too, so this was done fully knowing (or daftly ignoring) someone is looking forward to completing this goal, even if only one person is currently waiting on RoS on this roster (which, if anything would have made it all the easier to just summon and let that person link.)

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14 hours ago, Flubb said:

[20:58:10] As the Rite of Spring is completed, followers of Vynora may now receive a blessing!

 

By noone but the infamous vulture Yellowfinger minutes after I asked around for people to participate for the goal. Posted a link to the thread and its intention, too, so this was done fully knowing (or daftly ignoring) someone is looking forward to completing this goal, even if only one person is currently waiting on RoS on this roster (which, if anything would have made it all the easier to just summon and let that person link.)

 

Is there a possibility to punish such misbehaviour by the community? Is that character an alt, or who is the main player? I fear mere disapproval and shaming will not be sufficient.

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46 minutes ago, Ekcin said:

Is there a possibility to punish such misbehaviour by the community? Is that character an alt, or who is the main player? I fear mere disapproval and shaming will not be sufficient.

 

I'm not on board with rogue actions against other players that may warrant GM intervention, even if I think the player is being malicious/wants to troll. The system is just massively flawed in conjunction with this goal and allows for such behaviour, more for the worse than for the better. Any call out I make is not meant to reach the snipers as I doubt they care. But depending on how numerous it gets, the devs may have to take a hint. Time will tell. Better to just move on for now, though.

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56 minutes ago, Ekcin said:

Is there a possibility to punish such misbehaviour by the community? Is that character an alt, or who is the main player? I fear mere disapproval and shaming will not be sufficient.

 

As annoying as rite sniping is, you cannot punish someone for playing within the rules, especially when their behaviour is (a) heavily rewarded by game mechanics and (b) therefore not necessarily malicious.

 

The solution is to rework the daftly designed rite journal goal or simply chuck it.

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59 minutes ago, Ekcin said:

Is there a possibility to punish such misbehaviour by the community?

 

Casts were changed to punish less the others players, but it will do nothing to toxic behavior from the same player(s). We have rules and GMs for that...

 

Quote

Play Nice Or We Will Rip Your Heart Out (griefing)
Definition: Activities that are not constructive and with deliberate intent to do harm to others.
[...]
Punishment: You may be given a directive, warned, or even banned based on the situation.

 

With the amount of time it was done... and with that rule and it's definition (not the removed example that you can find its main page), it might be time for the staff to finally get involved... specially now that being part of the casts is a REQUIREMENT.

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1 hour ago, Odynn said:

With the amount of time it was done... and with that rule and it's definition (not the removed example that you can find its main page), it might be time for the staff to finally get involved... specially now that being part of the casts is a REQUIREMENT.

 

Problem is, a player can have already done the rite (even many times) and still have good reason to cast it again - not necessarily 'with deliberate intent to do harm to others'.

 

Some examples where this might be the case:

1. Player wants to get rite done on priest alts / friends' priests and fears if they don't snipe it, someone else will first.

2. Player wants 5-hr sleep bonus now, because Player has free time to grind / sleep bonus deficit / premium time right now, and not whenever the organized rite is planned to be cast.

3. Player wants the prestige of being named as the rite caster and going down in Wurm history.

 

Are these selfish actions? Sure, but they're not done purely out of malice and therefore not griefing. These actions come from the same place as private unique slays. If you base game goals on finite resources, you'll get players acting grabby and selfish. Not nice, but by no means terrible. And hey, it's a sandbox game and some people like some degree of competition. But I see two relevant differences between uniques and rites: (1) here, the finite resource (rite favour) is generated by everyone (prayers), so it really does feel like something is being stolen from you if you've been charging the pool on your server and the rite gets sniped; and (2) players have no alternate way of getting the associated reward, and what an immense reward it is – +5 cast power. It's a downright diabolical design choice for a supposedly PvE game: is this an MMO or a 'social experiment'?

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4 hours ago, Gwyn said:

 

Problem is, a player can have already done the rite (even many times) and still have good reason to cast it again - not necessarily 'with deliberate intent to do harm to others'.

 

Some examples where this might be the case:

1. Player wants to get rite done on priest alts / friends' priests and fears if they don't snipe it, someone else will first.

2. Player wants 5-hr sleep bonus now, because Player has free time to grind / sleep bonus deficit / premium time right now, and not whenever the organized rite is planned to be cast.

3. Player wants the prestige of being named as the rite caster and going down in Wurm history.

 

Are these selfish actions? Sure, but they're not done purely out of malice and therefore not griefing. These actions come from the same place as private unique slays. If you base game goals on finite resources, you'll get players acting grabby and selfish. Not nice, but by no means terrible. And hey, it's a sandbox game and some people like some degree of competition. But I see two relevant differences between uniques and rites: (1) here, the finite resource (rite favour) is generated by everyone (prayers), so it really does feel like something is being stolen from you if you've been charging the pool on your server and the rite gets sniped; and (2) players have no alternate way of getting the associated reward, and what an immense reward it is – +5 cast power. It's a downright diabolical design choice for a supposedly PvE game: is this an MMO or a 'social experiment'?

 

You're aware you're kinda contradicting yourself here?

 

First you try to explain that it isn't griefing, and then you're bringing up some excuses to explain that people may feel like there's something stolen from them.

 

IMHO theft can be considered as grieving as well.

Moreover, there's a public thread about the entire Rites, I'm pretty certain Flubb mentions times for when it can be done in the Wurm chat channels as well, so it's very, very,  VERY likely Yellowfinger KNEW this would happen as a group event. And yet he casts the spell to reap the benefits from other player's work.

That's theft, that's grieving and it should be stopped. Not because it's theft or grieving, but for something far more important:

Lack of respect for other players.

 

Because in the end it's all about  "I want it, I get it and let the rest who worked hard to get it can go to hell. I don't care, as long as I got what I want." 

Having respect for other players is most likely the most important thing in a MMO. Doesn't matter if it's a sandbox game or not. If you're selfish enough to get the rewards others worked for, if you lack the respect for what you did and only reap the benefits, you're asking to be disrepected and punished as well.

And there's no way to right the wrong done here.

 

Thorin :)

 

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16 minutes ago, Thorinoakshield said:

Moreover, there's a public thread about the entire Rites, I'm pretty certain Flubb mentions times for when it can be done in the Wurm chat channels as well, so it's very, very,  VERY likely Yellowfinger KNEW this would happen as a group event. And yet he casts the spell to reap the benefits from other player's work.

That's theft, that's grieving and it should be stopped. Not because it's theft or grieving, but for something far more important:

Lack of respect for other players.

 

Because in the end it's all about  "I want it, I get it and let the rest who worked hard to get it can go to hell. I don't care, as long as I got what I want." 

Having respect for other players is most likely the most important thing in a MMO. Doesn't matter if it's a sandbox game or not. If you're selfish enough to get the rewards others worked for, if you lack the respect for what you did and only reap the benefits, you're asking to be disrepected and punished as well.

And there's no way to right the wrong done here.

 

He have been doing it for years, checking in when the cast was available and doing it instantly for its own gain, screwing the community plans. So yes, some actions are within the rules... but that doesn't means repeating the same pattern over and over is... GMs added a rule for that kind of toxic behavior and then restricted it with some examples, people have complained about it for a while, now it's time to act and not just change the game mechanism since it's doing nothing (because others mechanisms were added to make the cast essentials).

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49 minutes ago, Thorinoakshield said:

You're aware you're kinda contradicting yourself here?

 

First you try to explain that it isn't griefing, and then you're bringing up some excuses to explain that people may feel like there's something stolen from them.

 

Don't confuse nuance for self-contradiction. My position is that although it feels like something is being stolen, strictly speaking nothing is being stolen because the game mechanics make rite favour public domain.

 

TL;DR Bad game design is rewarding players for being jerks, and getting other players hurt through their actions.

Edited by Gwyn

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I really hope dev team will ditch Rite goal and replace it or give alternative for it, i've been telling from the start that it is  very bad idea but they are stubborn as hell regarding it as usual...

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On 7/25/2019 at 8:02 PM, Gwyn said:

 

Don't confuse nuance for self-contradiction. My position is that although it feels like something is being stolen, strictly speaking nothing is being stolen because the game mechanics make rite favour public domain.

 

TL;DR Bad game design is rewarding players for being jerks, and getting other players hurt through their actions.

I can agree to this, and my original post was not about calling the GM but asking whether and how the community can do something about toxic players. It seems that in case toxic players care sh*t about the community, few or nothing can be done.

 

Yet I read in the rules "play nicely, or we rip your head off". This may sound more humurous than grim, but it is indeed a very serious sweeping clause (as it is called in law and jurisdiction) telling that disruptive behaviour is not tolerated even if no written rule exists against it.

 

The design problem cannot easily be removed. Changing the journal goal would be a way,  but on the other hand, a journal goal enforcing cooperation of the whole community is not bad at all. It would indeed be a helpful GM intervention to state that global rite sniping is considered a violation and may result in reset of the gains won by, and in account removal in case of repetition.

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No plans to ditch the rite goal, if one cast is done by this person there's no guarantee it wasnt done to achieve the goal on others. If players cant work together it could be changed to a major cooldown on being involved in a rite spell to stop it.

 

Discussion with the owner of yellowfinger has been raised, but that's a GM action and we'd like to avoid that for the most part. 

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32 minutes ago, Retrograde said:

No plans to ditch the rite goal, if one cast is done by this person there's no guarantee it wasnt done to achieve the goal on others. If players cant work together it could be changed to a major cooldown on being involved in a rite spell to stop it.

 

Discussion with the owner of yellowfinger has been raised, but that's a GM action and we'd like to avoid that for the most part. 

Flubb spent a lot of time praying and organizing the casts.  My priest was the only one left on his ROS list, so Flubb messaged me to get ready and then he starting asking around for others to participate.  Minutes later Yellowfinger sniped the cast.  That sounds like deliberate and malicious griefing to me.

 

Edit:

Changing the ROS cast to a major cooldown would reward those whose actions are the subject of this conversation, and punish those who had not completed it.

Edited by Thalorane
Response to cooldown suggestion

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I mean cooldown after casting per character, once cast it would take a long time before being able to cast again

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2 hours ago, Retrograde said:

I mean cooldown after casting per character, once cast it would take a long time before being able to cast again

 

That could cause other problems, especially considering the currently low player population. Less popular rites might be difficult to assemble a team for if previous rite participants were blocked from acting as batteries.

 

Here's an idea: how about 'participate in a rite' is expanded to include prayer contributions to the rite favour pool. Once a character has contributed a total of, say, 10k prayers to successfully cast rites, the goal requirements are satisfied. Such a change would give players more control over their own goal progression. Most importantly, it would mitigate the current (really, really not fun – hint, hint) feeling of being robbed every time a rite you need is sniped on your server. Something like this seems like the fairest way forward if there's no hope of the goal being ditched altogether.

Edited by Gwyn
clarity
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6 hours ago, Gwyn said:

 

That could cause other problems, especially considering the currently low player population. Less popular rites might be difficult to assemble a team for if previous rite participants were blocked from acting as batteries.

 

Here's an idea: how about 'participate in a rite' is expanded to include prayer contributions to the rite favour pool. Once a character has contributed a total of, say, 10k prayers to successfully cast rites, the goal requirements are satisfied. Such a change would give players more control over their own goal progression. Most importantly, it would mitigate the current (really, really not fun – hint, hint) feeling of being robbed every time a rite you need is sniped on your server. Something like this seems like the fairest way forward if there's no hope of the goal being ditched altogether.

I actually really like this idea.

@RetrogradeI'm so sick and tired of devs attitude to force multiplayer aspect in everything(meaning alternatives are needed for people who wants to do things solo at their own leisure, without paying for bunch of 2s alts and machine powerful enough to run them all no mather how more tedious it would be over doing it as a team) and i swear to god one day i will quit this game after all these years just because of it.

Just for your info, the current system is terible expecialy for Lib template priests, and brings no joy or sence of accomplishment but endless pain, stress and feeling of being left out for every single Lib priest there.

Edited by kochinac
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4 minutes ago, kochinac said:

Just for your info, the current system is terible expecialy for Lib template priests, and brings no joy or sence of accomplishment but endless pain, stress and feeling of being left out for every single Lib priest there.

 

I have nothing else to add to this other than yep.

 

Myself and Sme had to make the rite of death happen on inde ourselves because it was never going to happen otherwise, probably on any server seeing as my cast was the only one since the existing favors from priest overhaul time was exhausted.  We had to spend weeks with an army of accounts praying so much that fatigue was a constant issue in order to do virtually all 100k prayers ourselves (we counted our logs in notepad++) which is also why I didn't make any threads about making it public and only asked my alliance.  Because you know... opening it to the community is what gives the option for people to steal it.  Find me someone that puts in 99% or more of the work to something that will happen as a "community effort" once a year if at all seeing as there are no other rite of deaths before or after, and is willing to let someone else steal it, and I will show you a liar.  The system forces people to go behind the community's back in order to get what they want without being screwed over by those that did nothing at all.  Kinda like when there was a private pm to cast holy crop and one of the participants kingdom mates come over from chaos and steal the cast, working with the community results with getting screwed over because bad apples will ruin the whole bunch.

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8 hours ago, kochinac said:

Just for your info, the current system is terible expecialy for Lib template priests, and brings no joy or sence of accomplishment but endless pain, stress and feeling of being left out for every single Lib priest there.

 

That problem is not fully addressed even with Gwyn's proposal (which is a good idea I like too). Possibly the rigid 100k prayers threshold could be replaced having 100k as a cap for the most popular deities. For those with less followers, the threshold could be adapted down in a reasonable fashion. The server keeps track of active accounts and their affiliations, at least those data can easily be mined on a, say, per week basis. If the number BLers, say 20%, of that of the mean  WL followership (assuming for simplicity that this is distributed relatively evenly - which I doubt), 20k prayers should suffice for a global spell.

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16 minutes ago, Ekcin said:

That problem is not fully addressed even with Gwyn's proposal (which is a good idea I like too). Possibly the rigid 100k prayers threshold could be replaced having 100k as a cap for the most popular deities. For those with less followers, the threshold could be adapted down in a reasonable fashion. The server keeps track of active accounts and their affiliations, at least those data can easily be mined on a, say, per week basis. If the number BLers, say 20%, of that of the mean  WL followership (assuming for simplicity that this is distributed relatively evenly - which I doubt), 20k prayers should suffice for a global spell.

 

That just encourages preying on smaller communities.  Someone that lives on xanadu where they need 100k prayers could be stalking someone on one of the dead servers to see when they meet their goal.  The only way to prevent that would be to make it a real time update, which of course would then allow people to come over and block casts, the same as people logging in to get a rite in the past would block the cast

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9 hours ago, MrGARY said:

[...] working with the community results with getting screwed over because bad apples will ruin the whole bunch

 

40 minutes ago, MrGARY said:

That just encourages preying on smaller communities.  Someone that lives on xanadu where they need 100k prayers could be stalking someone on one of the dead servers to see when they meet their goal.  The only way to prevent that would be to make it a real time update, which of course would then allow people to come over and block casts, the same as people logging in to get a rite in the past would block the cast

 

This is the trouble with the current system and hardcoded protections. I used to enjoy public casts, the community worked toward something and we did the cast together at a planned time and everyone was happy, then we had to move to secretive casts to prevent ninja-ing and since this did nothing in the end... we just stopped bothering. Because we had no alternatives.

 

Now lets say that I grab my favorite kitchen knife and repeatedly stab someone named PurpleToes... the logic and real action won't be to remove and/or dull all the kitchen knives all around the world... The real action will be for the law to step in and deal with investigation, trial, judge, jury and proper punishment to prevent me from stabbing people again.

 

19 hours ago, Retrograde said:

No plans to ditch the rite goal, if one cast is done by this person there's no guarantee it wasnt done to achieve the goal on others. If players cant work together it could be changed to a major cooldown on being involved in a rite spell to stop it.

 

The goal is interesting, like i said public casts used to be enjoyable... BUT hardcoded systems will do NOTHING if some players decides to screw others (2s alts, VPN, etc).

 

In a time where you want to focus on player retention and making the game more enjoyable, our cops, judges and legal system that is our staff need to get out and prevent and/or punish the few that makes the game unexciting/wearisome to the rest of us... dulling the kitchen knives is not an option, you have to treat the problem and not the symptoms else they will happen over and over again.

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Guys, please. I know that bitching and moaning about this is pretty much in the OP already, but this is to be taken as evidence why the forced cooperation may indeed not work (We all said it won't, one of the premises of the thread was to actually prove it, or even better, be proven wrong.), but not as a discussion platform to debate how it needs to be changed. And so far it was just one deliberate snipe (more to come? Stay tuned...)

 

I was one of the first to say this will have problems, but this is getting a bit off the rails and goes into a more general territory of problems surrounding this, which there are plenty of threads about already.

 

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3 hours ago, MrGARY said:

 

That just encourages preying on smaller communities.  Someone that lives on xanadu ..

 

Misunderstood. Not per server ofc. which would be nonsense as everybody can sail to any server, but per cluster to make up for the global difference in followers.

 

That said, sorry Flubb for derailing. Let us move that discussion elsewhere.

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40 minutes ago, Flubb said:

Guys, please. I know that bitching and moaning about this is pretty much in the OP already, but this is to be taken as evidence why the forced cooperation may indeed not work (We all said it won't, one of the premises of the thread was to actually prove it, or even better, be proven wrong.), but not as a discussion platform to debate how it needs to be changed.

 

Fair enough. Perhaps I should have put my idea into a suggestion thread of its own.

 

41 minutes ago, Flubb said:

And so far it was just one deliberate snipe (more to come? Stay tuned...)

 

Just to set the record straight, I count three snipes on Xanadu since this thread was started. In fact, the last rite of each kind has been sniped.

  1. Rite of Spring now
  2. Holy Crop two weeks ago
  3. Ritual of the Sun a month and a half ago 

The last of these in particular rankles with me. I had started a thread alerting the community to the nearly full RotS favour pool and organizing a community cast. Then someone who admitted to having no knowledge about rite mechanics hijacked it and organized the rite before the favour pool was even full, meaning it could have been anywhere from 50% to 99% full. By some miracle, they managed to fill the favour pool – several hours after their stated cast time – and then immediately cast the rite. In doing so, they excluded me and others who had signed up first on my thread and later on this consolidated one. Though they acted in the open, that is still a snipe.

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1 hour ago, Gwyn said:

Holy Crop two weeks ago

 

To be fair, I didn't get to announce it in the ingame chat yet. If you count the thread as a general announcement, then it fall under that term, but I don't think that's a very charitable metric. Unless for you "sniping"  is any sort of interference, with or without malicious intent and it just serves to prove that the system is chaotic and will cause frustration just on its own.

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35 minutes ago, Flubb said:

 

To be fair, I didn't get to announce it in the ingame chat yet. If you count the thread as a general announcement, then it fall under that term, but I don't think that's a very charitable metric. Unless for you "sniping"  is any sort of interference, with or without malicious intent and it just serves to prove that the system is chaotic and will cause frustration just on its own.

Yes, I consider this thread as a general announcement and I leave aside the question of malicious intent as it's an unnecessary assumption and is not actually an integral component of 'sniping'. 'Sniping', if you look at the traditional use of the word, is about personal gain, not malice.

 

And the fact is that Holy Crop was cast by a kingdom-mate of an active PvPer who was in the group PM you made to those of us who had signed up for it. You announced rite was ready to Player X, and within a couple of hours Player Y, kingdom-mate of Player X, does the rite. Of course, we can't know what happened there, but it's awfully suspicious and on balance I think it's safe to say it was 'sniped'.

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